Hm, makes me wonder if hard drive data recovery software would work on there. Check out runtime.org for Get Data Back (for FAT or NTFS). That has a knack for diging out the FAT table or NFTS MFT and also finding lost data. Worth the buy, too, incase you ever delete a file that you don't have backed up.

What else. The only other undeleter that has worded for me since the DOS days was a demo of R-Studio. Only let me recover a few KB in demo mode, but that's all I needed at the time. I believe it's really expensive, so try GetDataBack first.

Or maybe some drive imaging software could do it. Doesn't Nero have options for "Skip Bad Blocks" (so people can pirate PSX games)? Maybe an option like that would help build an image which you could search off the HDD without the CDRom laser jerking back and forth untill it breaks through the side of your case because it can't read the holes in the disc.

Good luck.